


cut the cord and pull some strings

by palaces_outofparagraphs



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, I wrote this a long time ago, Stream of Consciousness, lapslock
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 03:23:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18984235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palaces_outofparagraphs/pseuds/palaces_outofparagraphs
Summary: betty cooper, ages 8 to 13





	cut the cord and pull some strings

**Author's Note:**

> heavily inspired by @flwrpotts' incredible "some things" series on tumblr

_ betty cooper _

raised on grit and resisting girlhood, tutus and pointe shoes and bloody palms. jughead and archie in the tree house, jughead and archie in the kitchen, jughead and archie on the playground. winding her fist back and hitting reggie mantle hard in the nose when he calls jughead a hobo. wielding her most brutal words on cheryl blossom when she tells archie she’s the only redhead allowed at the table and he has to go find new friends. archie and jughead in the cafeteria, archie and jughead on the baseball field, archie and jughead going after jason blossom when he calls her a smartypants teacher’s pet, never telling anyone she took it as a bit of a compliment. always thinks jason meant it as a bit of a compliment, but archie and jughead were desperate to even the odds. she kept beating people up for them, after all.

a sort of throbbing in her chest, in her knuckles, in her knees when she looks at jughead and archie and thinks someday they will want her to make a choice. she wants all of it. she wants everything. she wants the world but her palms can barely grasp the sixth grade, so how is she going to get everything she wants? anxiety stomachaches and smuggled judy blume books. she wants to survive, before she knows the word for what she wants. she wants to be happy, even though she never technically knew otherwise.

jughead and archie at the middle school dance, jughead and archie in math class, jughead and archie at archie’s house after school. she starts slow to fall in love with archie and feels guilty about it, like she’s betraying jughead, like she’s betraying herself. but he lives next door and it’s just so easy to do what she’s supposed to do without argument. she’s gotten used to it, even if there is still dirt under her fingernails, stolen library books under her mattress, jughead’s name doodled in the margins of her math homework. archie lives next door to her. he is clean cut and laughs out loud. jughead lives in sunnyside trailer park. he is dark haired and never has enough to eat at lunch. she loves them both equally and without reservation, but she is supposed to Love archie. she is supposed to do a lot of things. some of them she does. some things are just too hard to resist.

they come to her ballet recital in seventh grade, sit in the front of the audience beaming, bring her roses, and she loves them so much in that moment it is unbearable. soon after she will quit ballet, tired of her feet always hurting, and her mother will talk about nothing else for approximately one million years.

she just wants to be  _ them,  _ the three of them and nothing else forever and ever and ever, going into the sunset. she does not want division. she does not want to grow up. she wishes her mother would shut the hell up about ballet. it is almost a relief when she starts in on polly again, but not really because her mother and polly bring the house down every other day and it is growing tiresome. it grew tiresome a very long time ago.

a lot of things did. she is in eighth grade and she doesn’t get honor roll third quarter because a lot of things are possible but biology is not, and she sinks to her carpeted bedroom floor and quite calmly has a panic attack, praying with every cell in her body that her mother doesn’t come in, because if her mother came in while she was having a panic attack she thinks she might just jump out the window, not to die, just to get  _ away,  _ to get  _ away,  _ to get  _ away - _

she is in eighth grade and she doesn’t get honor roll third quarter because a lot of things are possible but biology is not, and she is having a panic attack, and the first thing she does when she can breathe again is call jughead. and then she calls archie. she asks them to please come over and please not ask any questions and please bring as much junk food as they can carry.

and they do.

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this is january along w a series of other fragmented fic that i might put up while im finishing my Luke Perry Tribute Fic, if i ever do finish that  
> thank you for reading <3


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